<\/p>\n
A graphic from the city of Brooklyn Park is meant to help the public identify the visual differences between e-bikes, e-scooters, e-motos and motorized bikes.<\/p>\n
(Submitted graphic)<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, as local public safety officials stopped to talk with residents during National Night Out, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley heard one particular question raised repeatedly: What can the city do about electric bikes and scooters?<\/p>\n
The safety issue has come into stark focus this summer.<\/p>\n
On the afternoon of July 10, a 9-year-old boy riding an\u00a0e-scooter was fatally struck by a\u00a0pickup truck at the intersection of Candlewood Drive and Brunswick Avenue N.<\/p>\n
Weeks later, on the afternoon of Aug. 15, two children riding an e-bike collided with a vehicle at Pearson and Sierra parkways.\u00a0Both children were taken to the hospital in stable condition, according to police.<\/p>\n
“We’re seeing these increased crashes throughout the entire country … and we’re seeing those here in Brooklyn Park as well,” Brooklyn Park Police Inspector Matt Rabe said.<\/p>\n
Rabe joined Chief Bruley in speaking about the issue during the Aug. 24 City Council meeting.<\/p>\n
Rabe said the police department has seen a “huge increase” across the city in\u00a0e-bike, e-scooter and other e-vehicle usage.<\/p>\n
And with that increase in usage has been heightened confusion over the rules and laws in place around the various types of\u00a0e-vehicles that have become increasingly popular in recent years.<\/p>\n
A common e-vehicle type seen locally is the e-bike, which have pedals and an electric motor. Under state law, anyone under the age of 15 is prohibited from operating any of these types of e-bikes.<\/p>\n
There are different classes of e-bikes. For Class 1 e-bikes, the motor assists only while pedaling and up to 20 miles per hour. For Class 2, there is a throttle lever and the motor can propel the e-bike without any pedaling, also up to\u00a020 miles per hour. Class 3 is similar to Class 1, but is faster with a maximum assisted top speed of 28 miles per hour.<\/p>\n
“They all three have pedals, and just by looking at them from afar you can’t tell really if they’re Class 1, 2 or 3, which makes it difficult to immediately take action on them,” Rabe said.<\/p>\n
The smaller motorized foot scooters are called e-scooters. These include the Lime branded scooters, which can be rented by the minute in some cities. The minimum age to ride an e-scooter is 12, and helmets are required for any rider under the age of 18.<\/p>\n
The higher-powered e-motos don’t have pedals, look similar to a motorcycle and can easily exceed 30 miles per hour. The minimum age to ride one of these is 16.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A graphic from the city of Brooklyn Park shows the different requirements and restrictions for e-scooters, e-bikes, motorized bikes and\u00a0e-motos.<\/p>\n
(Submitted graphic)<\/p>\n
Rabe noted that e-vehicles are not addressed in any current city ordinance due to the fact they are still relatively new.<\/p>\n
Under state law, there is limited action local police can take, Rabe added. The penalties under the state statutes that govern e-bike and e-scooter issues are\u00a0a petty misdemeanor. Additionally, a new state law that went into effect Aug. 1 bars any prosecution for children under 13 (raised from the previous age limit of under 10).<\/p>\n
“We know that 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds are riding e-bikes, and there is no mechanism for accountability there, so the state law is not particularly helpful in that area,” Rabe said.<\/p>\n
E-motos, on the other hand, have to be registered with the state and are governed by all of the rules that a motorcycle would be governed under.<\/p>\n
“E-motos are much easier to deal with. … Those are regulated by state law, and we can take action on those pretty easily,” Rabe said.<\/p>\n
He noted that actions the city could take include adding signs to trails noting which e-vehicles are restricted. He said the city could work to lobby the state for law changes and, locally, update city ordinance to specifically address e-vehicles.<\/p>\n
“The goal here is really about educating parents,” Rabe said. “If we impound that bike so that kid can’t ride it back, and we just let the parent know … it gives us an opportunity to pass off a little bit of information to the parents and educate them.”<\/p>\n
In nearby Maple Grove, a city ordinance was recently passed that gives them more authority related to e-vehicle violations. A first violation in Maple Grove will result in a juvenile receiving a warning and the parent or guardian being given notice. Any subsequent violations within a 12-month period will have an administrative citation issued to the parent or guardian if reasonable steps have not been taken to prevent future violations. A further step may include confiscating the e-vehicle.<\/p>\n
“It seems like if we want to have an impact, my suggestion is that we go down the road of potentially making this a misdemeanor by ordinance and then allowing us to at least remove the bike and seize it. And then it’s a significant inconvenience to have to come up and go through the process of recovering the bike,”\u00a0Chief Bruley said.\u00a0“That seems to be the only lever that I can see us able to pull right now.”<\/p>\n
The police chief said he plans to come back to the council with some\u00a0proposals for an ordinance change that would allow the city to potentially seize e-vehicles when they are being operated in an illegal manner\u00a0in the city.<\/p>\n
“And then we’ll figure out what else might be some options for council to consider [and] what that ordinance might look like to give us some teeth, and then use that as a tool to be able to educate and hold those accountable that reoffend,” the police chief said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A graphic from the city of Brooklyn Park is meant to help the public identify the visual differences…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,5796,6909,1159,118293,118516,124790,39479,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-331651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-brooklyn-park","tag-e-bike","tag-e-bikes","tag-e-motos","tag-e-scooters","tag-e-vehicles","tag-mne","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}